Welcome to the Burnbag Podcast.

My name is Andrgo Nawala. I am being joined today by Michael Brown. Michael served as the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU, between 2018 and 2022, and DIU accelerates the adoption of leading commercial technology into the military. AIMIN had transformed how the Defense Department operates and its capabilities. Michael was also a Presidential Innovation Fellow, working with the Defense Innovation Experimental DIU-X at the DOD. Prior to his time there, he was the CEO of Symantec, one of the world's leading cybersecurity companies. Michael is now a venture partner at Shield Capital. And I do want to emphasize that Michael's time at DIU was quite significant. A lot of change happened in that organization. We are very delighted to be joined by Michael here today for a great talk on defense innovation, DIU, and innovation in general. So Mike, thanks for joining us here today.

Well, André, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Thank you. So I sort of want to set the stage for our conversation. So the first question I really want to ask is that word innovation, we hear it quite a bit. We use it quite a bit. What does the word innovation mean to you?

Well, I think innovation means to all of us something new, some new idea, something new in terms of how we're going to go about what it is we're trying to get done. So I think that applied certainly to the Defense Innovation Unit. But if you think about it, innovation, if it was happening everywhere in all areas, would just be chaos. So the balance when you're leading an organization is how much new are we bringing in on a base that allows us to have some repeatability in what we're doing for a processing structure, which are typically the enemies of innovation. So I think getting that balance is what's key. Defense Innovation Unit, I've said this to Ash Carter when he was around us. We lost him this past year, just an incredible towering figure in defense. And I feel very lucky to have had some time to work with him. But I remember telling him, I think Defense Innovation Unit is misnamed because it is confusing, because innovation is so broad to your question, Andre. Defense Innovation Unit to set the stage is really about commercial technology. So the innovation is what commercial technologies can we bring to bear on urgent military problems? Because more and more of the innovation we seek in the Defense Department is happening outside the Defense Enterprise or establishment, which would include the Defense Department, the Defense Labs, and the prime contractors, folks like Raytheon, Boeing, etc. So I think that was really the insight of Ash Carter was realizing that so much of that was happening outside. So how are we going to get access to that? And that's why he set up the IU.